Qaeda video vows attacks on US missions

AFP | August 5, 2007

A wanted American member of Al-Qaeda warned in a new video on Sunday that US diplomatic missions and other interests were "legitimate targets," vowing that the network would attack these "spy dens."

In the footage compiled by Al-Qaeda's production arm Al-Sahab, an unnamed narrator singled out US missions in oil-rich Gulf Arab states as potential targets.

"We shall continue to target you at home and abroad just as you target us at home and abroad," Adam Gadahn, an American convert to Islam who has been indicted for treason in the United States, said in the video.

The video was posted on LauraMansfield.com, an American website which monitors terrorist groups.

"These spy dens and military command and control centres from which you plotted your aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and which still provide vital moral, military, material, and logistical support to the Crusade, shall continue to be legitimate targets for brave Muslims... unless you heed our demands," Gadahn said.

"Stop the Crusade and leave the Muslims alone," he added.

In a message to the Americans and their "Crusader allies," Gadahn said: "The amount of respect we have for your international law is even less than the respect you hold for defined sharia (Islamic law), and our observance of it is comparable to your observance of sharia."

"How can we comply with a law which contradicts divine law in whole and in part?" Gadahn asked.

"How can we recognise a law which states that the embassy or consulate is for all intents and purposes an inviolable fortress which the host country has no right to enter or monitor and when our sharia commands us to liberate every handspan of Islamic land occupied by the unbelievers?"

The one-hour 17-minute video was shown about two months after Gadahn warned in another Internet video that US President George W. Bush should withdraw all his troops from Muslim land or face attacks worse than September 11.

The only way to deal with the "dens of saboteurs and spies... when they refuse to leave of their own accord is to expel them by force," said Gadahn, who was wearing a chequered red and white Arab headdress.

The video included clips from old speeches by Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"The killing of those infidels and the targeting of their dens (diplomatic missions) is a religious duty," thundered the narrator.

"Your embassies and consulates in Qatar, Kuwait, Riyadh and Bahrain provided you full support in your (March 2003 US-led) invasion of Iraq."

Gadahn -- also known as Azzam al-Amriki and Azzam the American -- has appeared in several videotapes for Al-Qaeda since 2004, praising the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and threatening new terror onslaughts.

In October 2006, he became the first person to be charged in the United States with treason since the World War II era. The charge carries a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum penalty of death.

Gadahn, who is believed to be in Pakistan, has a one million dollar reward for his capture and appears along with bin Laden on a US "Wanted" poster featuring 26 "faces of global terrorism."

Gadahn was born in 1978 in southern California, the son of a 1960s Jewish rock musician who later converted to Christianity and became a rural goat farmer.

His conversion to Islam came after he attended the Islamic Centre of Orange County, where he is believed to have come under the influence of two foreign-born Islamist radicals.

Gadahn is believed to have left California for Karachi in 1998 and gradually lost contact with relatives in the United States.

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